Alaska Digest

JUNEAU - Friday marks the application deadline for two scholarships that award season ski passes to local children.

The scholarships, created to recognize an Olympic skier from Juneau, are awarded each year by the ski area board of directors.

The program was established in 1992 in recognition of Hilary Lindh's silver medal in the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics, and of the hard work she dedicated to downhill ski racing.

Lindh started skiing in Juneau at an early age and won the U.S. and World Junior Championship in the downhill at age 16. She attended a Utah ski academy in 1984 and, eight years later, won an Olympic Silver Medal.

Lindh competed on the World Cup Circuit for 12 years, winning three world cup downhills, and raced in three Olympics. She retired in March of 1997 and was inducted into the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in 2005.

Two local children who demonstrate scholastic achievement, competitive spirit and financial need will receive season passes. Application forms are available at local schools, Foggy Mountain, Nugget Alaskan Outfitters, Sequence, Gravity Plan, Eaglecrest Ski Area or its Web site at www.skijuneau.com.

Winners will be announced on Dec. 7.

Processor sentenced for letting salmon rot

ANCHORAGE - Three years ago, Jeremy Oliver swept into the summer fishing community of Ekuk to take over the newly vacated cannery, assuring dozens of families that he would be a reliable buyer and processor of their wild salmon.

But by mid-season, 400 tons of Bristol Bay sockeye had rotted so badly that the state declared the area an environmental catastrophe. None of the fishermen or cannery workers were ever compensated for the loss.

On Monday, a magistrate in Dillingham ordered Oliver to pay them a total of $50,000 in restitution and spend 40 days in jail for one misdemeanor related to the violation of Alaska's Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

Officials with the company's defunct banker, Strategica Import-Export Financial Group LLC, of Florida, have already agreed to pay $187,000.

Wolf pack blamed for killing, eating dogs

FAIRBANKS - A state wildlife biologist suspects a pack of wolves that killed and devoured a dog three weeks ago has done it again.

The latest killing was a pet dog that was chained up in Two Rivers last week. Before that it was a dog devoured in North Pole.

The latest killing took place at a home near 19.5 Mile Chena Hot Springs Road. The owner found the remains of the 13-year-old dog on Thanksgiving morning.

"They broke her loose from her chain and drug her about 100 yards into the field and ate her," said the owner, who asked not to be identified for fear that his two young children would find out details of how the dog died.

There were six wolves in the pack, he said. The wolves bedded down right where they killed the dog, only about a football field from the house, which sits right next to the road.

"That's how I knew there were six of them," the owner said. "It looks like there are four bigger ones and two smaller ones, based on the size of their feet."

There's a good chance it's the same pack of wolves that killed a dog in North Pole on Oct. 31, said Tom Seaton, assistant area management biologist for the Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.

A pack of five wolves killed and ate a 15-year-old black Labrador retriever at a home on the edge of the Chena Lake Recreation Area after the owner let it out early in the morning. The owners found the dead dog half eaten on the lake not far from their house.

While it's a 25-mile drive between where the dog was killed in North Pole and the incident in Two Rivers, the straight-line distance is much shorter.

There are several dog mushing trails connecting the two areas. The wolves also could have traveled along the Chena River to reach the house at 19.5 Mile, which is about a mile from the river.

Whether the wolves have developed a taste for dog remains to be seen, Seaton said.

There are plenty of dogs and livestock in Two Rivers, a mushing and farming enclave about 20 miles east of Fairbanks.